Announcements

The Changing Lives through Sport and Physical Activity Fund provides short term additional resource into the sporting and community sector with two year grants to support organisations delivering sport and physical activity in their communities.

Scottish Government have published 'A Healthier Future: Framework for the Prevention, Early Detection and Early Intervention of Type 2 Diabetes'. This framework details action for the prevention, early detection and early intervention of type 2 diabetes.

The Scottish Government has published their Delivery Plan for Physical Activity and Sport with the ambition to cut physical inactivity by 15% across Scotland by 2030, in line with the WHO's Global Action Plan for Physical Activity.

Community Links 2018/19 funding is now open for applications, and this year Sustrans are looking for ambitious, inclusive projects that will make Scottish towns and cities friendlier and safer places for people to walk and cycle.
Projects that meet the following aims will be eligible for funding:
- Create infrastructure that enables people to walk, cycle or use another active travel mode as their preferred mode of travel for everyday journeys
- Meet the needs of communities, providing people with the opportunity to shape their local environment and link the places they live with the places they want to go
- Raise the standards by using innovative and imaginative approaches for community and business engagement, design and construction of walking and/or cycling projects
- Encourage placemaking that promotes greater use of public space and higher levels of active travel
- Create an enabling context/environment for active travel that facilitates the delivery of other projects
Find out more here:

Sustrans Scotland is encouraging people to travel more actively to work by inviting them to join the Scottish Workplace Journey Challenge. Funded by Transport Scotland. The free, month-long Challenge helps to inspire people to travel in ways that benefit their health, wellbeing and the environment.
Workplaces from across Scotland will compete against each other to see who can clock up the most walking, cycling, public transport and car-sharing journeys between 1–31 March, in a bid to win more than £2,000 worth of prizes.
Participants will use an online platform to log their sustainable journeys and compete to climb a leader board. They will have access to feedback on how many calories they’ve burned and the amount of money they’ve saved on each journey by choosing healthy, green and cheap alternatives to driving.
Individual challengers will also be judged on the number of journeys they complete while workplaces are judged on the overall rate of participation in the team.
Read more:

Gender inequality remains a big issue when it comes to active travel in the UK, says Sustrans. The charity has published a new report, ‘Are We Not There Yet?, revealing that women’s journeys around cities are typically shorter than men’s, use different modes of transport and are more likely to involve ‘trip-chaining’ (multi-stop journeys) which tend to be for a balance of child care, work and household responsibilities.
While women are motivated to travel actively for physical and mental health reasons, worries about their personal safety, convenience (particularly when taking multi-stop trips) and appearance are all barriers to preventing them from cycling and walking, says the report.
It looked at the travel habits and choices of nearly 2,000 women in Glasgow and combined the findings with a literature review of research on women’s travel patterns across Scotland, the UK and Europe.
The report also highlighted that few women are involved in creating transport policy and planning in the UK. Currently, transport has the lowest percentage of women in senior posts within the public sector in Scotland, with women representing only 6.25% heads of transport bodies. In addition, the transport sector accounts for only 22% of female workers UK-wide.
Read the full report here:

National Statistics released by Transport Scotland show that of public transport journeys 75% were made by bus, 18% by rail, 5% by air and 2% by ferry.
In addition to public transport journeys the publication also shows that in Scotland:
• Car traffic is estimated to have increased by 2% over the year to 35.4 billion vehicle kilometres and pedal cycle traffic is estimated to have increased by 3% to 352 million vehicle kilometres in 2016.
• Nine million motor vehicles were licensed by the end of 2016 and 270,000 new vehicle registrations in 2016. Eighty two per cent of all vehicles licensed were cars.
• There were 46.4 billion vehicle kilometres travelled on Scotland’s roads in 2016, a 2% increase on the previous year.
• There were 393 million passenger journeys by bus in 2016, accounting for 75% of all public transport journeys.
• There were 94.2 million passenger journeys on ScotRail services in 2016/17, an increase of 1% since 2015/16.
Read more here:

Physical activity through sport or recreation has been proven to have a positive impact on physical and mental health and wellbeing.
Supported by funds from Comic Relief, SAMH embarked on a project to understand why people experiencing a mental health problem can find it difficult to participate in physical activity. This was particularly important as there is much evidence to suggest there is a link between regular physical activity and improved mental health.
Work on the Charter was launched by SAMH Ambassador, Sir Chris Hoy, in 2016 and was developed through the People Active for Change & Equality (PACE) project with representatives from:
NHS Health Scotland
Sportscotland
SPORTA
Scottish Student Sport
North Lanarkshire Leisure
KA Leisure
Glasgow Sport
The result is Scotland’s Mental Health Charter for Physical Activity and Sport which sets out how sport and recreation organisations can adopt positive mental health practice to ensure everyone can engage, participate and achieve in physical activity and sport.
Read the charter below:

Sport Scotland are looking for a group of young people to speak up for sport and work with them and Young Scot to help influence and shape sport in Scotland, and they would value your support to spread the word! Do you know someone who has got what it takes to speak up for sport?
Applications will close at noon on Thursday 22nd February 2016
They are looking for young people who are:
• Living in Scotland
• Aged between 14 - 23
• Passionate about sport
• Able to commit 3 hours a week on a voluntary basis
• Want to make a difference
More information is available online below:

Following its success last year, the Scottish Workplace Journey Challenge is returning in March. Join the challenge as an individual or as part of your workplace and be part of a movement in Scotland to get as many people as possible commuting by foot, bike, public transport or lift-sharing. Taking part is a great way to get active, reduce carbon emissions and save money!
Simply register online to log the journeys you make by foot, bike, public transport and car-share. Over £2000 worth of prizes are up for grabs, including cinema tickets, Kindles and high street vouchers. Register before 1st March to enter the Early Bird prize draw where you can win one of ten £20 Wiggle vouchers.
Logging even one sustainable commuting or business travel journey during March will help boost you or your workplace team up the leader board. Set personal targets, earn rewards and transform your commute!
Find out more and register at www.scotland.getmeactive.org.uk #JourneyChallenge

Re-opened for applications. Through the fund, grants are available for environmental projects in Scotland that enhance woodlands and green infrastructure, boost active travel and encourage community growing. Funding is available for projects that deliver or lead to woodland creation, management or enhancement, especially for community use; formal or informal food growing projects with a focus on community lead activities or engaging local communities and encouraging the Good Food Nation ethos; feasibility studies for new routes or major sections, and capital works in urban areas for route enhancement and development; and improving or creating functional access routes passing through or leading to the development of green networks, greenspace or countryside and associated green infrastructure.
Projects funded are likely to be located in or immediately adjacent to communities in the 15% most deprived datazones (nationally) according to the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation.
The application deadline is 5pm, Monday 5th February 2018.
Read more here:

The Scottish Government will increase sportscotland’s core funding by £2 million in 2018-19, from £29.7 million to £31.7 million, to prioritise the development of sport within Scotland.
In addition to this, the Scottish Government has also pledged to underwrite any potential shortfall in National Lottery funding for sportscotland of up to £3.4 million.
Read the full story below:

Glasgow City Council’s winning design in the Scottish Government funded Community Links PLUS competition will deliver first of its kind infrastructure in Scotland.
Run by Sustrans Scotland, the design competition delivers pioneering and game-changing projects to design better places and spaces for people to live, and walk and cycle in for everyday journeys.
The project will deliver a 3km segregated cycle and pedestrian route from Queen’s Park in Glasgow’s Southside to Stockwell Street in the heart of the Merchant City.
In addition to the creation of world class active travel infrastructure in a densely populated area of Glasgow, the project will also deliver a host of community, health and business benefits through its place-making approach.
Read more below:

The grants aim to empower communities to make changes to paths in their area that will make it easier for people to make every day journeys by active travel such as cycling and walking.
They will give priority to projects that: improve paths so it’s easier for people to use them and be more physically active; show people where active travel routes are; provide opportunities and encourage people in communities to work together.
The grant will fund active travel routes to schools, to places of work, other popular places within towns and routes that help connect communities.
More here:

MORE than one million Scots are at risk of transport poverty, which would leave them without access to essential services or work, a study has shown.
A study by sustainable transport charity Sustrans Scotland found that up to 20 per cent of neighbourhoods studied were at risk of transport poverty occurring.
And the areas at higher risk were far more likely to be in accessible small towns (28 per cent) or accessible rural locations (30 per cent) than in remote parts of the country. Entitled Transport Poverty In Scotland the report was released at the start of Challenge Poverty Week.
The research used data on household income, access to cars and public transport, and allocated risk ratings accordingly.
Read more below:

The Scottish Government is seeking responses to a consultation on a range of actions to improve diet and weight in Scotland. Alongside the launch, it announced funding of £42 million over the next 5 years to expand services.
For physical activity, the consultation sets out ambitions to:
•increase investment in active travel and link this with efforts to support weight management activity
•improve planning systems to create enabling spaces for physical activity
•the continuation of existing programmes, eg, Active Schools and Daily Mile to maintain physical activity and a healthy weight.
The consultation document asks:
How can our work to encourage physical activity contribute most effectively to tackling obesity?
The consultation runs from the 26th October 2017 to the 31st January 2018.
Download A healthier future - action and ambitions on diet, activity and healthy weight: Consultation document below: